Online dictionaryOnline dictionary
Synonyms, antonyms, pronunciation

  Home
English Dictionary      examples: 'day', 'get rid of', 'New York Bay'




Embroider   /ɪmbrˈɔɪdər/   Listen
Embroider

verb
(past & past part. embroidered; pres. part. embroidering)
1.
Decorate with needlework.  Synonym: broider.
2.
Add details to.  Synonyms: aggrandise, aggrandize, blow up, dramatise, dramatize, embellish, lard, pad.



Related searches:



WordNet 3.0 © 2010 Princeton University








Advanced search
     Find words:
Starting with
Ending with
Containing
Matching a pattern  

Synonyms
Antonyms
Quotes
Words linked to  

only single words



Share |
Add this dictionary
to your browser search bar





"Embroider" Quotes from Famous Books



... powers of speech, they could tell stories more true and tender than any we read. For women often sew the tragedy or comedy of life into their work as they sit apparently safe and serene at home, yet are thinking deeply, living whole heart-histories, and praying fervent prayers while they embroider pretty trifles or do ...
— An Old-fashioned Girl • Louisa May Alcott

... tradesmen of England, as they grow wealthy, coming every day to the Herald's Office, to search for the coats-of-arms of their ancestors, in order to paint them upon their coaches, and engrave them upon their plate, embroider them upon their furniture, or carve them upon the pediments of their new houses; and how often do we see them trace the registers of their families up to the prime nobility, or the most ancient gentry ...
— The Complete English Tradesman (1839 ed.) • Daniel Defoe

... the manner in which we avail ourselves of this inestimable gift of Faraki. Having left the temple, we go into several shady thickets, where we take a light repast; after which, each of us employs himself in some unoppressive labour. Some embroider, others apply themselves to painting, others cultivate flowers or fruits, others turn little implements for our use. Many of these little works are sold to the people, who purchase them with eagerness. The money arising from this sale forms a considerable part of our revenue. Our morning is thus ...
— Memoirs And Historical Chronicles Of The Courts Of Europe - Marguerite de Valois, Madame de Pompadour, and Catherine de Medici • Various

... curious manufacture we saw, however, was that from the pine-apple leaf, which produces a fibre so fine and light, that the weaving operation must be carried on under water, as the least current of air will break it. The Tagal girls work it into handkerchiefs, which they richly embroider. These are greatly valued. A more substantial manufacture is produced from the thicker fibres, for dress pieces, which are also considered of great value. We saw also some beautiful mats made from strips of bamboo, and leaves of various ...
— In the Eastern Seas • W.H.G. Kingston

... of the monkey-wife, the king next ordered his daughters-in-law to embroider a cap for him in two days, under penalty of death in case of failure. The caps were all ...
— Filipino Popular Tales • Dean S. Fansler

... most useful and serviceable being. His talents were many, and various. He could crochet most perfectly, and his coverlets were unrivalled in Lancia. He decked an altar, or dressed the images as well as any sacristan. He could upholster furniture, make wax flowers, paper walls, embroider with hair, and paint plates. And when any of his female friends wished to have her hair well dressed to go to some ball, Manuel Antonio gallantly went to the rescue, and did it as cleverly as the best hairdresser in Madrid. ...
— The Grandee • Armando Palacio Valds

... cannot say, and he regrets it. He, regrets it, because Time, according to certain solemn philosophers, is the canvas background against which we embroider the follies of our existence, and truly it is little scientific not to be able to indicate at precisely which moment the canvas of this book begins. But the author does not know; all he can say is, that at that moment the steeds of night had for an appreciable time been coursing ...
— The Quest • Pio Baroja

... centre of which stood a statue of the Virgin, who seemed to smile on us all alike. In winter we had a fire. Our clothes were warm and neat; our food was excellent. We were taught to read and write, to sew and embroider. There was a recreation hour between all the exercises. Those who were studious and good were rewarded; and twice a week we were taken into the country for a long walk. It was during one of these excursions that I learned from the ...
— The Count's Millions - Volume 1 (of 2) • Emile Gaboriau

... refuse to testify. But I will tell you what you asked to know—if that will do any good. Every word of the story about Mr. Griswold—the story that you overheard, you know—was true; every single word of it. Do you suppose I should have dared to embroider it the least little bit—with you sitting right there at ...
— The Price • Francis Lynde

... For Griffith to embroider this Poe Interpretation in the centre of a fairly consistent fabric, and move on into a radiant climax of his own that is in organic relation to the whole, is an achievement indeed. The final criticism is that the play is derivative. It is not built from new material in all its parts, as was ...
— The Art Of The Moving Picture • Vachel Lindsay

... fortunate a beginning; but fearing, lest some or other might seek after it, we slunk out at a back-door, where we saw a groom saddling his horses; but, as having forgotten somewhat, he run into the house leaving behind him an embroider'd mantle, mail'd to one of the saddles: In his absence I cut the straps and under the covert of some out-sheds we made off with it to a neighbouring forest. Being more out of danger among the thickets ...
— The Satyricon • Petronius Arbiter

... . Unquestionably his fancies were fantastic, anti-natural, bordering on hallucination, and they betray a desire for impossible novelty; but it is allowable to prefer them to the sickly simplicity of those so-called poems that embroider with old faded wools upon the canvas of worn-out truisms, trite, trivial and ...
— The Certain Hour • James Branch Cabell

... all silent, thinking of what they had just heard. Life is terrible and marvellous, and so, however terrible a story you tell in Russia, however you embroider it with nests of robbers, long knives and such marvels, it always finds an echo of reality in the soul of the listener, and only a man who has been a good deal affected by education looks askance distrustfully, and even he will be silent. The cross by the roadside, the dark ...
— The Bishop and Other Stories • Anton Chekhov

... true man to be a fitting companion for a woman of genius, but not a very great one. I am not sure that she will not embroider her ideal better on a plain ground than on one with a brilliant pattern already worked in its texture. But as the very essence of genius is truthfulness, contact with realities, (which are always ideas behind shows of form or ...
— The Professor at the Breakfast Table • Oliver Wendell Holmes (Sr.)

... friend, I must ask you to accept this book from me, and to make the best of it. Of course, I have had to conjecture a great deal, and to embroider even more; but it is no more than embroidery. I have not touched the fabric itself which you put into my hands; and anyone who cares to pull out the threads I have inserted can do so if they will, without any fear of the thing falling ...
— None Other Gods • Robert Hugh Benson

... vegetable we have. She has had her bolt of muslin to make as she chose for her bedding, and linen for her underclothing. The quilts she pieced and the blankets she wove have been hers. All of them have been as well provided for as we could afford. They can knit, darn, patch, tuck, hem, and embroider, set a hen and plant a garden. I go on a vacation and leave each of them to keep house for her father a month, before she enters a home of her own. They are strong, healthy girls; I hope all of them are making a good showing at being useful ...
— Laddie • Gene Stratton Porter

... wild tales like those he had recounted about Superstition Pool to Helen and her father, wilder tales about a people who dwelt on in the more northern and more bleak parts of the desert. Lies, for the most part, he judged them, such lies as men tell of an unknown country and other men repeat and embroider. There were men whom he knew who maintained stoutly that the old Seven Cities of Cibola were no dead myth but a living reality; that there were a Hidden People; that they had strange customs and worshipped ...
— The Desert Valley • Jackson Gregory

... people think. Fine writers say, 'Oh, men have a thousand objects, women but one!' That's nonsense, dear Percy; women have their thousand objects too. They have not the bar, but they have the milliner's shop; they can't fight, but they can sit by the window and embroider a work-bag; they don't rush into politics, but they plunge their souls into love for a parrot or a lap-dog. Don't let men flatter themselves; Providence has been just as kind in that respect to ...
— Godolphin, Complete • Edward Bulwer-Lytton

... frown like this, Cornelli. You look exactly as if you had two little horns growing on your forehead, one on each side. There are many other and better amusements for you than spending your life in the stable. Are you able to embroider?" ...
— Cornelli • Johanna Spyri

... Grace returned, and sitting down by Nora, who had stationed herself in the big porch swing, she picked up her work and began to embroider industriously. ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower

... the garden has got back its own color again! A warmish vapor moistens my rough-grained nose. I'm filled with the desire to jump and run. The grass is reeking, shining wet. Horned snails are feeling around in the pink gravel with the tips of their eyes, and speckled black and white slugs embroider the wall with a silver ribbon. Oh! what a beautiful green and gold beastie running out there in the wet! Shall I catch it? Shall I scratch its metallic shell, until it breaks with a little crackling sound? No. I'd rather stay near Her. She's leaning against the door, ...
— Barks and Purrs • Colette Willy, aka Colette

... Mexican genius. One of the teachers made a little girl present me with a hair chain which she had just completed. Great order and decorum prevailed. Amongst the permanent scholars in the upper part of the institution, there are some who embroider astonishingly well—surplices, altar-hangings, in short, all the church vestments in gold or silk. In the room where these are kept are the confessionals for the pupils. The priests are in a separate room, and the penitents kneel before the grating which separates the two apartments. All ...
— Life in Mexico • Frances Calderon De La Barca

... for a few more agonised moments, of the brilliant, high-bred woman who had been but yesterday the centre of an almost European network of friendships and interests! Love, loss, death,—oh, how unalterable is this essential content of life, embroider it and adorn it as ...
— Miss Bretherton • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... evergreens just below. It carries away something, too—scents calculated to bewilder the thrift-hunting bee: sometimes a whiff of peppermint from an old lady's pew, but oftener the breath of musk and southernwood, gathered in ancient gardens, and borne up here to embroider the preacher's drowsy homilies, and remind us, when we faint, of the keen ...
— Tiverton Tales • Alice Brown

... stopped when once I begin. And if I was you, Faith—(how pretty you look!)—I'd keep still and not let my head be turned; the old direction's the best; and after all directions are more than dresses. For what's the odds between an embroidered vest and a plain one? Not that it's much to embroider it—I used to fiddle faddle many a one, till I lost my eyes; and I'll teach you to do it in a minute, if you like." With which kind and lucid proposal, Miss Bezac put her hand softly on Faith's waist and smoothed out an imaginary wrinkle in ...
— Say and Seal, Volume I • Susan Warner

... vulnerable point, Hagen persuades Kriemhild to embroider a cross on her husband's garment over the fatal spot. Then, sure now of triumphing over this dreaded foe, he feigns the kings have sent word they will submit, and proposes that instead of fighting they all go hunting ...
— The Book of the Epic • Helene A. Guerber

... minister on his band; it decked the baby's little cap; it was shut up, to be mildewed and moulder away, in the coffins of the dead. But it is not recorded that, in a single instance, her skill was called in aid to embroider the white veil which was to cover the pure blushes of a bride. The exception indicated the ever-relentless rigor with which ...
— The Scarlet Letter • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... this crepe!—a dozen eyes went out ay! yi! This satin is like a tile! These fans were made in Spain! This is as big as a windmill. God of my soul!"—she threw a handful of yellow sewing-silk upon a piece of white satin; "Ana shall embroider this gown,—the golden poppies of California on a bank of mountain snow." She suddenly seized a case of topaz and a piece of scarlet silk and ran over to me: I being a Monterena, etiquette forbade me to purchase in Santa Barbara. "Thou must ...
— The Doomswoman - An Historical Romance of Old California • Gertrude Franklin Horn Atherton

... it would be foolish, even in this event, to pretend that Hamlet exhausts Shakespeare; art does little more than embroider the fringe of the garment of life, and the most complex character in drama or even in fiction is simple indeed when compared with even the simplest of living men or women. Shakespeare included in himself Falstaff and Cleopatra, beside the author of the ...
— The Man Shakespeare • Frank Harris

... marriage still mounted. "Not even from that pair would I have believed such a thing possible!" she exclaimed; and she went into a long, low, contemplative laugh, looking not at me, but at the fire. Our silent companion continued to embroider. "That girl," my hostess resumed, "and her discreditable father played on my nephew's youth and chivalry to the tune of—well, you ...
— Lady Baltimore • Owen Wister

... means one of our finer Highland lochs, it furnished, to at least my eye at this time, a delightful prospect in still October mornings, when the light gossamer went sailing about in white filmy threads, and birch and hazel, glorified by decay, served to embroider with gold the brown hillsides which, standing up on either hand in their long vista of more than twenty miles, form the barriers of the lake; and when the sun, still struggling with a blue diluted haze, fell delicately on the smooth ...
— My Schools and Schoolmasters - or The Story of my Education. • Hugh Miller

... as it were but a Pisgah view of the promised land, of the spring which they are foremost to proclaim. Next come the clumsy gentians and yellow anemones, covered with soft down like fledgling birds. These are among the earliest and hardiest blossoms that embroider the high meadows with a diaper of blue and gold. About the same time primroses and auriculas begin to tuft the dripping rocks, while frail white fleur-de-lis, like flakes of snow forgotten by the ...
— Sketches and Studies in Italy and Greece • John Addington Symonds

... pocketbook, baron, which I promised to embroider for you. Will you look at the design? ...
— The Works of Frederich Schiller in English • Frederich Schiller

... said Robin, softly; "I used to think I would drape the flag over my baby's cradle, and embroider it on ...
— The Master-Knot of Human Fate • Ellis Meredith

... always follow in the wake of luxury and debauchery. Effemination makes its appearance early in life. The young boy likes the society of girls; he plays with dolls, and, if permitted, will don female attire and dress his hair like a girl. He learns to sew, to knit, to embroider, to do "tatting." He becomes a connoisseur in female dress, and likes to discuss matters pertaining to the toilet of females. He does not care for boyish sports, and when he grows older, takes no pleasure in the amusements and pursuits ...
— Religion and Lust - or, The Psychical Correlation of Religious Emotion and Sexual Desire • James Weir

... domestic duties. The race of strong, hardy, cheerful girls, that used to grow up in country-places, and made the bright, neat, New-England kitchens of old times,—the girls that could wash, iron, brew, bake, tackle a horse and drive him, no less than braid straw, embroider, draw, paint, and read innumerable books,—this race of women, pride of olden time, is daily lessening; and in their stead come the fragile, easily fatigued, languid girls of a modern age, drilled in book-learning, ignorant of common things. The great danger ...
— Atlantic Monthly, Volume 14, No. 84, October, 1864 - A Magazine Of Literature, Art, And Politics • Various

... me! I'm as poor as Job myself, but my old yellow sash will wash and make into sachets, and I'll cut the crushed parts out of hair ribbons, and use the ends for needlebooks. If they are a tiny bit stained, I will embroider flowers over the spots. We shall manage the work somehow, never fear; and think of the tea and refreshments, and sails in the punts! We shall simply coin money over them. Lilias is going ...
— A Houseful of Girls • Mrs. George de Horne Vaizey

... They speak but little, and that by way of whistling, clear, not rough. The very devils conjured in any country do answer in the language of the place; yet sometimes the subterraneans speak more distinctly than at other times. Their women are said to spin very fine, to dye, to tossue, and embroider; but whether it be as manual operation of substantial refined stuffs, with apt and solid instruments, or only curious cobwebs, unpalpable rainbows, and a phantastic imitation of the actions of more terrestrial mortals, since it transcended all the senses of the seer to discern whether, ...
— Folk-Lore and Legends - Scotland • Anonymous

... Embark ensxipigxi. Embarrass embarasi. Embarrassment embaraso. Embellish beligi, ornami. Embers brulajxo. Emblem emblemo. Embolden kuragxigxi. Embossment reliefo. Embrace cxirkauxpreni. Embroider brodi. Embryo embrio. Embryology embriologio. Emerald smeraldo. Emergency ekokazo. Emetic vomilo. Emigrant elmigranto. Emigrate elmigri. Emigration elmigrado, emigracio. Eminence altajxo. ...
— English-Esperanto Dictionary • John Charles O'Connor and Charles Frederic Hayes

... not a back hair out of place, they must have accepted the results as a testimony to the value of the personal factor in uniform. Respect for individual tastes was rather a mark of that time in the navy. Seamen handy with their needle were permitted, if not encouraged, to embroider elaborate patterns, in divers colors, on the fronts of their shirts, and turned many honest pennies by doing the like for less skillful shipmates. Pride in personal appearance, dandyism, is quite consonant with military feeling, as history has abundantly shown; and it may be ...
— From Sail to Steam, Recollections of Naval Life • Captain A. T. Mahan

... you and I," cried Garratt Skinner, starting up, as though carried away by candor. "Here am I, a poor man—here are you, my daughter, a girl with the charm and the beauty of the spring, and here's Wallie Hine, rich, weak, and susceptible. Oh, there's a story for a Barstow to embroider! But, Sylvia, he shall not so much as hint at the story. For your sake, my dear, for your sake," cried Garratt Skinner, with all the emphasis of a loving father. He wiped his ...
— Running Water • A. E. W. Mason

... why Master Rolfe alone went not to the bear-baiting, but joined us in the garden. She said the air was keen, and fetched me her mask, and then herself went indoors to embroider Samson ...
— To Have and To Hold • Mary Johnston

... make no doubt of it," grumbled the old man seating himself. "But 'twere meeter for a maiden to embroider, or to play the virginals than to shoot the bow or run with the hounds as ...
— In Doublet and Hose - A Story for Girls • Lucy Foster Madison

... the dusty ground. Meantime the Trojan dames, oppress'd with woe, To Pallas' fane in long procession go, In hopes to reconcile their heav'nly foe. They weep, they beat their breasts, they rend their hair, And rich embroider'd vests for presents bear; But the stern goddess stands unmov'd with pray'r. Thrice round the Trojan walls Achilles drew The corpse of Hector, whom in fight he slew. Here Priam sues; and there, for sums of gold, The lifeless body of his son is sold. So sad an object, ...
— The Aeneid • Virgil

... daughters the pride and glory of living unseen. The other sisters, secure in innocence, tended cattle on lonely mountain-sides, or toiled bare-legged up the steep ascents, their heads crowned with orange-baskets. The chosen sister was taught to read, to embroider, and to dwell indoors; if she went out it was only under escort, and with her face buried in a hood of almost incredible size, affording only a glimpse of the poor pale cheeks, quite unlike the rosy vigor of the damsels on the mountain-side. The girls, ...
— Women and the Alphabet • Thomas Wentworth Higginson

... in winter and from 1 to 6 p.m. in summer Eglentyne and her sisters were supposed to devote themselves to manual or brain work, interspersed with a certain amount of sober and godly recreation. She would spin, or embroider vestments with the crowned monogram M of the Blessed Virgin in blue and gold thread, or make little silken purses for her friends and finely sewn bands for them to bind round their arms after a bleeding. She would read too, in her psalter ...
— Medieval People • Eileen Edna Power

... will make thee beds of roses, And a thousand fragrant posies: A cap of flowers, and a kirtle, Embroider'd all ...
— Tudor and Stuart Love Songs • Various

... waiting for the young gentleman at the tailor's to decide which color he preferred, and then the tailor told me to stop while he cut it, and then he gave me such a beautiful pattern for my mother to embroider it by—but it is a sight of work to do it, sir, and I'm afraid she will set up all the long nights to sew, while I am sleeping, for the man said he must have it completed by next Thursday; the young gentleman is to be married then, and will want it—and if it isn't done, maybe ...
— Choice Readings for the Home Circle • Anonymous

... with an enormous pack, on his excursion; and when off his aching shoulders slowly falls back on the bank the loosened load, in blessed relief think ye not that he enjoys, like a very poet, the beauty of the butterflies that, wavering through the air, settle down on the wildflowers around him that embroider the wayside! Yet our pedlar is not so much either of an entomologist or a botanist as not to take out his scrip, and eat his bread and cheese with a mute prayer and a munching appetite—not idle, it must be confessed, in that sense—but in every other idle even ...
— Recreations of Christopher North, Volume 2 • John Wilson

... assignats in the strong-box, she produced from her work-basket a white scarf, which she had begun to embroider, and set to work on it. At once industrious and a coquette, she knew instinctively how to ply her needle so as to fascinate an admirer and make a pretty thing for her wearing at one and the same time; she had quite different ways of working according to the person ...
— The Gods are Athirst • Anatole France

... Mexique paintings, all the plumes; What Rome, Greece, Palestine e'er said, I in this light mosaic read. Thrice happy he, who, not mistook, Hath read in Nature's mystic book! And see how chance's better wit Could with a mask my studies hit! The oak-leaves me embroider all, Between which caterpillars crawl; And ivy, with familiar trails, Me licks and clasps, and curls and hales. Under this Attic cope I move, Like some great prelate of the grove; Then, languishing with ease, I toss On pallets swoln of velvet moss, While the wind, cooling ...
— Andrew Marvell • Augustine Birrell

... was left there to be taught to serve God and to learn how to embroider the purple and fine linen for the priests' vestments. Never before had such exquisite embroidery been done as that which Mary's fingers so delicately stitched, for her work was aided by angel hands. Sleeping or waking, the blessed angels ...
— Knights of Art - Stories of the Italian Painters • Amy Steedman

... more than pretty. She was according to the Japanese ideal of beauty; and that standard is not reached by one woman in a hundred thousand. Also she was more than clever: she was accomplished. She composed very dainty poems,—could arrange flowers exquisitely, perform tea-ceremonies faultlessly, embroider, make silk mosaic: in short, she was genteel. And her first public appearance made a flutter in the fast world of Kyoto. it was evident that she could make almost any conquest she pleased, and that ...
— Kokoro - Japanese Inner Life Hints • Lafcadio Hearn

... Indians admire the beautiful markings on the backs of serpents. Hence when a Huichol woman is about to weave or embroider, her husband catches a large serpent and holds it in a cleft stick, while the woman strokes the reptile with one hand down the whole length of its back; then she passes the same hand over her forehead and eyes, that she may be able to work as ...
— The Golden Bough - A study of magic and religion • Sir James George Frazer

... the bed She had made for her lover, White were the sheets And embroider'd the cover; But his sheets are more white, And his canopy grander, And sounder he sleeps Where the hill ...
— The Modern Scottish Minstrel, Volumes I-VI. - The Songs of Scotland of the Past Half Century • Various

... to her rich wardrobe went, Where treasured odours breathed a costly scent; There lay the vestures of no vulgar art, Sidonian maids embroider'd every part. Here, as the queen revolved with careful eyes The various textures and the various dyes She chose a web that shone superior far, And glow'd refulgent as the ...
— Needlework As Art • Marian Alford

... and would not slide, I called Basilio. For the modest reward of two pesos a month (one dollar gold) he skated my floors till they shone like mirrors. He ran errands for a penny or two. His wife would embroider for me, or wash a garment if I needed it in a hurry. If I had an errand which took me out nights, Basilio lit up an old lantern, unsolicited, and went ahead with the light and a bolo. If a heavy rain came up when I was at school, he appeared with my mackintosh and rubbers. And while a ...
— A Woman's Impression of the Philippines • Mary Helen Fee

... the Society of the Broken Heart had taught Dolores to sing beautifully, to play upon the piano and the guitar, to embroider, to paint mauve roses on pink tambourines and many other useful arts, graces and accomplishments—but they had not taught her practical morality nor anything of cooking, marketing, plain sewing, house-cleaning ...
— Driftwood Spars - The Stories of a Man, a Boy, a Woman, and Certain Other People Who - Strangely Met Upon the Sea of Life • Percival Christopher Wren

... families of the Curacas and inferior nobles, and brought up in the great convent-like establishments under the care of certain elderly matrons, who instructed them in their religious duties, and taught them to spin and embroider, and weave the vicuna wool for the temple hangings and for the use of the Inca. They were entirely cut off from their own people and from the world at large, only the Inca and the queen having the right to enter those sacred precincts. From them the brides of the Inca were chosen, for the law of ...
— The Red True Story Book • Various

... keep the Colonel, has decided to kill her husband by faked telegram. So you have a distinctly intriguing theme, which Miss TENNYSON JESSE and Captain HARWOOD handle with very considerable adroitness and embroider with many really sparkling and ...
— Punch, or the London Charivari, Vol. 153, Aug 29, 1917 • Various

... said Maria, "how that all the women who have come to give me linen to sew and embroider were sent by you, and that is why they paid me ...
— First Love (Little Blue Book #1195) - And Other Fascinating Stories of Spanish Life • Various

... thee beds of roses And a thousand fragrant posies, A cap of flowers, and a kirtle Embroider'd ...
— The Golden Treasury - Of the Best Songs and Lyrical Poems in the English Language • Various

... people. Every morning after breakfast, Julien would play several games of bezique with his wife, smoking and sipping brandy as he played. She would then go up to her room and sit down beside the window, and as the rain beat against the panes, or the wind shook the windows, she would embroider away steadily. Occasionally she would raise her eyes and look out at the gray sea which had white-caps on it. Then, after gazing listlessly for some time, ...
— Une Vie, A Piece of String and Other Stories • Guy de Maupassant

... was thus strictly prescribed; it must be selected out of a cycle of legends familiar to the audience; and whatever freedom might be allowed to the poet in his treatment of the theme, whatever the reflections he might embroider upon it, the speculative or ethical views, the criticism of contemporary life, all must be subservient to the main object originally proposed, the setting forth, for edification as well as for delight, of some episodes in ...
— English Prose - A Series of Related Essays for the Discussion and Practice • Frederick William Roe (edit. and select.)

... incompetent or vile ones get elected, as they sometimes do,) there are other, quieter contingencies, infinitely more important. Shams, &c., will always be the show, like ocean's scum; enough, if waters deep and clear make up the rest. Enough, that while the piled embroider'd shoddy gaud and fraud spreads to the superficial eye, the hidden warp and weft are genuine, and will wear forever. Enough, in short, that the race, the land which could raise such as the late rebellion, could also put it down. The average man ...
— Complete Prose Works - Specimen Days and Collect, November Boughs and Goodbye My Fancy • Walt Whitman

... genial than even June sunlight, if her eyes would reflect in into mine. With such companionship, all the Gradgrinds in existence would prose in vain; life would never lose its ideality, nor the world become a mere combination of things. Her woman's fancy would embroider my man's reason and make it beautiful, while not taking from its strength. Idiot that I was, in imagining that I alone could achieve success! Inevitably I could make but a half success, since the finer feminine element would be wanting. Do I wish men ...
— A Day Of Fate • E. P. Roe

... piece, a comedy of art as they call it here— or, as we say, a comedy of masks—wherein the stock characters of Harlequin, Columbine, Brighella and Pantalone are given a rag of a plot, and are expected to embroider that with follies, drolleries and obscenities according as their humour of the moment may dictate. The persons who give the title to this particular farce—the Donne Furlane— are the lowest class of Venetian women, and their ...
— The Fool Errant • Maurice Hewlett

... Lang, who did the stories in this book, says: 'Many hundreds of years ago, when most of these stories were told in the halls of great castles, the lives of children were very different from what they are now. The little girls were taught by their mothers' maidens to spin and embroider, or make simple medicines from the common herbs, and the boys learnt to ride and tilt, and shoot with bows and arrows; but their tasks done, no one paid any further heed to them. They had very ...
— The Red Romance Book • Various

... they were created, Would bring white hairs unto a quiet grave. Ah, what a life were this! how sweet! how lovely! Gives not the hawthorn bush a sweeter shade To shepherds looking on their silly sheep Than doth a rich embroider'd canopy To kings that fear their subjects' treachery? O, yes, it doth; a thousand-fold it doth! And to conclude, the shepherd's homely curds, His cold thin drink out of his leather bottle, His wonted sleep under ...
— King Henry VI, Third Part • William Shakespeare [Rolfe edition]

... their early life at one of the little German courts, and were skilled in all branches of knowledge necessary to the education of a fine lady. Under their instructions she became a miracle of accomplishments. By the time she was eighteen she could embroider to admiration, and had worked whole histories of the saints in tapestry with such strength of expression in their countenances that they looked like so many souls in purgatory. She could read without great difficulty, and had spelled her way through several Church legends and almost all the ...
— The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. • Washington Irving

... had stretched the deer-skin. With an iron instrument she constantly scraped the skin, throwing water upon it. She had smoked it too, and now it was ready to make into mocassins or leggins. She had determined, while she was tanning the deer-skin, how she would embroider them. They should be richer and handsomer even than those of their chief's son; nay, gayer than those worn by the chief himself. She had beads and stained porcupine quills; all were ready for ...
— Dahcotah - Life and Legends of the Sioux Around Fort Snelling • Mary Eastman

... to get the money that she never thought at all of the terrible tax it would be to return it. Still, by working hard morning, noon, and night—she added to her gains by doing fine needlework for several ladies, who said that no one could embroider like Mrs. Hopkins—she managed to make two ends just meet together, and she always continued to send Mrs. Church her two pounds fifteen shillings and sevenpence on the first of every month. Tom was the one who ...
— The Rebel of the School • Mrs. L. T. Meade

... was a woman there! How terrible it must have been for her to be alone with her children before you arrived, and to think of her killing wolves with the spear. How different your women must be from us, Beric, for we are only taught to embroider, to dress ourselves, and to care for pretty things. Why, I should be frightened out of my life at the sight of a wolf if I were all alone and had no ...
— Beric the Briton - A Story of the Roman Invasion • G. A. Henty

... Dodge, mounting the steps, "have my work in my bag. I am embroidering a center-piece which is to be sold for at least twice its value—for I can't embroider worth a cent—at the fair." She sat down beside him, and fished out of the bag a square of white linen and ...
— An Alabaster Box • Mary E. Wilkins Freeman and Florence Morse Kingsley

... way downstairs, but it was a little pathetic, also to think of the poor man having to mend his own clothes. The German gentlemen embroider, I know, but darning hose is another ...
— Little Women • Louisa May Alcott

... I haven't only a sixpence in money; but couldn't I learn Beatrice to embroider, if ...
— All's Well - Alice's Victory • Emily Sarah Holt

... exquisitely; she could read for hours in the sweetest and clearest of voices, without one yawn, the dullest of dull High Church novels. She could answer notes and sing like a siren, and she could embroider prie-dieu chairs and table-covers, and slippers and handkerchiefs, and darn point lace ...
— The Baronet's Bride • May Agnes Fleming

... hearted were invited to bring all their ornaments and all manner of rich embroideries, and brilliant fancy work of scarlet, blue and purple. As usual in our own day the Jewish women were allowed to give generously, work untiringly and beg eloquently to build altars and Tabernacles to the Lord, to embroider slippers and make flowing robes for the priesthood, but they could not enter the holy of holies or take any active part, in ...
— The Woman's Bible. • Elizabeth Cady Stanton

... it was not just as sensible a thing to make and sell good bread as to paint scarfs or embroider tidies, and mother, after she heard of their proposal, ...
— Holiday Stories for Young People • Various

... his ignorance; and the man that has neither pens nor ink nor crayons, when a record of his thought would have delivered him over to the derision of posterity. This, however, the reader will say, is to embroider a large moral upon a trivial occasion. Possibly the moral may be disproportionately large; and yet, after all, the occasion may not be so trivial as it seems. One of the many revolutions worked by the railway system is, to force men into a much ampler publicity; to throw them at a distance ...
— The Posthumous Works of Thomas De Quincey, Vol. II (2 vols) • Thomas De Quincey

... heart-strings of the superstitious. The view from the summit is very wonderful; in the foreground of the huge picture, the forest of mountain tops, while westward in the distance is the fabled and saint-blessed Mare Brendanicum of the old writers, where the fiords embroider the coast line. ...
— The Sunny Side of Ireland - How to see it by the Great Southern and Western Railway • John O'Mahony and R. Lloyd Praeger

... to read evening prayers; the stiff arm-chairs with their faded chintz covers; the writing-table with its presentation inkstand; the groups of silhouettes on the walls, her forbears of long ago; the needlework on the fire-screen, in which, at nine years old, she had been proud to embroider the white rose-bud still so lackadaisically prominent; the stool on which she used to sit and knit beside her grandmother; the place on the run where the old collie used to lie—she saw his ghost there still!—all ...
— Delia Blanchflower • Mrs. Humphry Ward

... arsenic and strychnin enough to cure a dozen weak women. She's always too weak to exercise, lies in bed two days out of three, reads and sometimes writes a letter or two. But before Christmas comes (you know she is mighty cunning with her fingers; she can sew and embroider and make all sorts of pretty, womanish things) she works so hard making presents that she's just clear done out for the next two months and won't leave her room for weeks. That's about all she does from one year's end to another, but complain of ...
— Our Nervous Friends - Illustrating the Mastery of Nervousness • Robert S. Carroll

... while I asked if John had said any more on the subject. "Did he embroider the theme at ...
— We Three • Gouverneur Morris

... regard it in that light—but as something that must be endured till a new future should open out before her. She learns her lessons, sings in the chapel, knows something of compote-making, and can embroider with skilful little fingers almost after Soeur Lucie's own heart. She still holds aloof from her companions, turning to Soeur Lucie for society, though rather with the feeling of the simple-hearted little nun being bon ...
— My Little Lady • Eleanor Frances Poynter

... stripes, each about eight inches wide, of hand-worked embroidery of the strangest, old-world-looking patterns and the most brilliant colors. These things are manufactured by the peasantry of the hill-country in the neighborhood of San Germano, who grow, shear, spin, weave, dye and embroider the wool themselves. And being barbarously unsophisticated by any adulteration of cotton, and in no wise stinted in the quantity of material, they are wonderfully strong and enduring. The most remarkable thing about them, however, is the ...
— Lippincott's Magazine Of Popular Literature And Science, April 1875, Vol. XV., No. 88 • Various

... bubbles; Fame's but a hollow echo, Gold, pure clay; Honour the darling but of one short day; Beauty, th' eye's idol, but a damask'd skin; State, but a golden prison, to live in And torture free-born minds; embroider'd Trains, Merely but pageants for proud swelling veins; And Blood allied to greatness is alone Inherited, not purchas'd, nor our own. Fame, Honour, Beauty, State, Train, Blood and Birth, Are but the fading ...
— The Complete Angler • Izaak Walton

... Nora. "Far from it. Jessica has a blouse to finish and I have innumerable initials to embroider." ...
— Grace Harlowe's Return to Overton Campus • Jessie Graham Flower

... it; There is that justice left, since you maintain His table, he should counter-feed your brain. Then write how well he in his sack hath droll'd, Straight there's a bottle to your chamber roll'd, Or with embroider'd words praise his French suit, Month hence 'tis yours with his mans, to boot; Or but applaud his boss'd legs: two to none, But he most nobly doth give you one. Or spin an elegie on his false hair: 'Tis well, he cries, but living hair is dear. Yet say that out of order ther's one ...
— Lucasta • Richard Lovelace

... indeed, Lenora. You are speaking of Madame De Royan, for whom you were employed to embroider those handsome collars. How does she ...
— The Poor Gentleman • Hendrik Conscience

... Though you live in an elegant residence, and fare sumptuously every day, let your daughters feel it is a disgrace to them not to know how to work. I denounce the idea, prevalent in society, that though our young women may embroider slippers, and crochet, and make mats for lamps to stand on, without disgrace, the idea of doing anything for a livelihood is dishonorable. It is a shame for a young woman, belonging to a large family, to be inefficient when the father toils his life away for her support. It is a ...
— The Abominations of Modern Society • Rev. T. De Witt Talmage

... We should not act if we did not set before ourselves an end, and we seek a thing only because we feel the lack of it. Our action proceeds thus from "nothing" to "something," and its very essence is to embroider "something" on the canvas of "nothing." The truth is that the "nothing" concerned here is the absence not so much of a thing as of a utility. If I bring a visitor into a room that I have not yet furnished, I say to him that "there is nothing in it." ...
— Creative Evolution • Henri Bergson

... him on having dictated the proclamation of the Left, by which Louis Bonaparte was outlawed." And now, behold them, Senators, Councillors of State, ministers, belaced, betagged, bedizened with gold! Base wretches! Before you embroider your sleeves, ...
— Napoleon the Little • Victor Hugo

... it is to-day, and a certain liberty was permitted to interpretation. This liberty went farther than one would think, resembling much what the great Italian singers furnished examples of in the days of Rubini and Malibran. They did not hesitate to embroider the compositions, and the reprises were widespread. Reprises meant that when the same piece was sung a second time, the executants gave free bridle to their own inspiration. I have heard in my youth the last echoes of this style of performance. Nowadays reprises are suppressed, ...
— On the Execution of Music, and Principally of Ancient Music • Camille Saint-Saens

... denied? a boon more humble crave. And minister to him who serves a slave; Be sure you fasten on promotion's scale, Even if you seize some footman by the tail: 70 The ascent is easy, and the prospect clear, From the smirch'd scullion to the embroider'd peer. The ambitious drudge preferr'd, postilion rides, Advanced again, the chair benighted guides; Here doom'd, if Nature strung his sinewy frame, The slave, perhaps, of some insatiate dame; But if, exempted from the Herculean toil, A fairer field awaits him, rich with ...
— Poetical Works of Johnson, Parnell, Gray, and Smollett - With Memoirs, Critical Dissertations, and Explanatory Notes • Samuel Johnson, Thomas Parnell, Thomas Gray, and Tobias Smollett

... it pomp ye needed, And all the proud array Of courtly joust and high parade Upon a gala day? Look up; have not my valleys Their torrents white with foam— Their lines of silver bullion On the blue hillocks of home? Doth not sweet May embroider My rocks with pearls and flowers? Her fingers trace a richer lace Than yours in all ...
— Poems • Victor Hugo

... only sing like a lark, or a Mrs. Billington, and dance like Hillisberg or Parisot; and embroider beautifully; and spell as well as a Dixonary itself; but she had such a kindly, smiling, tender, gentle, generous heart of her own, as won the love of everybody who came near her, from Minerva herself down to the poor girl in the scullery, and ...
— Vanity Fair • William Makepeace Thackeray

... basin that resembles an antique sarcophagus. A tailor is sewing before his door with a young priest seated sociably beside him; a burly friar goes by with an empty wine-barrel on his head; children are at play; women, at their own doorsteps, mend clothes, embroider, weave hats of Tuscan straw, or twirl the distaff. Many idlers, meanwhile, strolling from one group to another, let the warm day slide by in the sweet, ...
— The Marble Faun, Volume II. - The Romance of Monte Beni • Nathaniel Hawthorne

... thousand times rather have a little bit of a cottage, just large enough for—for two people, and everything in it just as cosy and simple as it could be. Then we—then I could learn to paint and decorate—I've learned a little already—and embroider and such things, and slowly, very slowly, you know, I would fill the house with pretty things that would belong to it and be a part of it, and a part of me, too, ...
— The House that Jill Built - after Jack's had proved a failure • E. C. Gardner

... sharp hoofs where the frozen turnips were most plentiful; porcupines in quest of anything they could get their keen teeth into;—and often the big timber wolves would send shivering across the waste a long whining howl. And in the morning their tracks would embroider the ...
— The Blazed Trail • Stewart Edward White

... time, and to gain time without displeasing Austria, we must use the same language we have used for the last six months—that we can do everything if Austria is our ally.... Work on this, beat about the bush, and gain time.... You can embroider on this canvas for the next two months, and find matter for ...
— The Life of Napoleon I (Volumes, 1 and 2) • John Holland Rose

... band within the royal gate, The Queen who still delay'd, respectful wait. In purple trapping, burnish'd gold array'd, Proud on the foaming bit, her courser play'd; 175 She comes; the court her graceful steps surround; Her Tyrian vest, embroider'd fringes bound; Her quiver gold, with gold her hair enlac'd, A golden clasp her flowing mantle brac'd. Next with his Phrygian youth Iulus came 180 On wings of joy; but charms divine proclaim Cythereas offspring as he join'd ...
— The Fourth Book of Virgil's Aeneid and the Ninth Book of Voltaire's Henriad • Virgil and Voltaire

... to his knee, With shawl-girt head and ornamented gun, And gold-embroider'd garments, fair to see; The crimson-scarfed men of Macedon; The Delhi with his cap of terror on, And crooked glaive; the lively, supple Greek, And swarthy Nubia's mutilated son; The bearded Turk, that rarely deigns to speak, ...
— The Life of Lord Byron • John Galt

... on some instrument, although this last is not quite a proper accomplishment for young women of good family. Hardly any one dreams of giving a woman any systematic intellectual training.[] Much more important it is that she should know how to weave, spin, embroider, dominate the cook, and superintend the details of a dinner party. She will have hardly time to learn these matters thoroughly before she is "given a husband," and her childhood days are ...
— A Day In Old Athens • William Stearns Davis

... of wedding festivities presided over by the Queen at Asolo, to which came, among many other guests from the capital by the Lagunes, three Venetian gentlemen and three ladies. This gentle company, in a series of conversations, dwell upon, and embroider in many variations, that inexhaustible theme, the love of man for woman. A subject this which, transposed into an atmosphere at once more frankly sensuous and of a higher spirituality, might well have served as the basis for such a picture as Giorgione's Fete Champetre in ...
— The Earlier Work of Titian • Claude Phillips

... who had tried to catch the yellow snake on our river voyage called on me with his wife, who knew how to embroider well, and I bought some shirts embellished with realistic representations of animals, etc. The husband had that unsightly skin disease (tinea imbricata) that made his body appear to be covered with half-loose fish scales. Next day, to my amazement, he had shed the scales. The previous night he ...
— Through Central Borneo: - An Account of Two Years' Travel in the Land of Head-Hunters - Between the Years 1913 and 1917 • Carl Lumholtz

... imagination. Yet we can see that the account must on the whole have been very correct. The Galloway nags, the girdle-cakes, the bagpipes—every little detail rings true. Jean-le-Bel was actually present in a Border campaign, and from him Froissart got his material; but he has never attempted to embroider it, and its accuracy, where we can to some extent test it, must predispose us to accept his accounts where they ...
— Through the Magic Door • Arthur Conan Doyle

... obtain for him the castellanship of Radom. Alas for me! I can do nothing for my family; but I have embroidered a dress for Angelica which has cost both time and labor; the prince royal told me he thought it in the best taste. I will shortly embroider a cap for the ...
— The Continental Monthly, Vol. 4, No. 5, November, 1863 • Various

... them from without,[97] Struck back the bolts. The portals, at that stroke, Sent forth a tone deep as the pastur'd bull's, And flew wide open. She, ascending, next, The elevated floor on which the chests 60 That held her own fragrant apparel stood, With lifted hand aloft took down the bow In its embroider'd bow-case safe enclosed. Then, sitting there, she lay'd it on her knees, Weeping aloud, and drew it from the case. Thus weeping over it long time she sat, Till satiate, at the last, with grief and ...
— The Odyssey of Homer • Homer

... the turrets that Usk from its waters reflected, Arthur vanish'd with all his knights, Merlin and Lancelot and Galahad, all gone, dissolv'd utterly like an exhalation; Pass'd! pass'd! for us, forever pass'd, that once so mighty world, now void, inanimate, phantom world, Embroider'd, dazzling, foreign world, with all its gorgeous legends, myths, Its kings and castles proud, its priests and warlike lords and courtly dames, Pass'd to its charnel vault, coffin'd with crown and armor on, Blazon'd with Shakspere's purple page, ...
— Leaves of Grass • Walt Whitman

... you since Bretton Woods, because the little details of our travels might have seemed an aggravation while I kept the Secret up my sleeve, and had no particular personal news with which to embroider the story of the days. Now, it's different. I can't tell you the Secret yet, it's true; but there's some rather big news—news which brought us all back to Long Island in a hurry after Great Barrington. I'm debating ...
— The Lightning Conductor Discovers America • C. N. (Charles Norris) Williamson and A. M. (Alice Muriel)

... wight, active in all housewifely labors and domestic accomplishments, and attentive to her lessons. She could make "pyes," and fine network; she could knit lace, and spin linen thread and woolen yarn; she could make purses, and embroider pocket-books, and weave watch strings, and piece patchwork. She learned "dansing, or danceing I should say," from one Master Turner; she attended a sewing school, to become a neat and deft little sempstress, and above all, she attended a writing school to learn that most ...
— Diary of Anna Green Winslow - A Boston School Girl of 1771 • Anna Green Winslow

... never could work; and Joan and Maud, they neither of them work. Maud did embroider a banner once for her brother; it is in the hail. I think it beautiful; but somehow or other she never ...
— Sybil - or the Two Nations • Benjamin Disraeli

... you must show me your embroidery. I embroider and draw patterns myself a little. If you want a judge of your work, you must apply ...
— She Stoops to Conquer - or, The Mistakes of a Night. A Comedy. • Oliver Goldsmith

... Juan what the matter was. Juan replied, "I told my father that I had found a wife, as you bade me, and now he wishes to test my wife, to see if she is a suitable mate for me, and has sent me with this handkerchief for her to embroider. I do not know what to do, for now my father will surely find out that I have deceived him, and I shall be disgraced." The frog said: "Do not worry. Give me your handkerchief and go to sleep for an hour and I will have it embroidered for you." At the end of the hour the frog brought ...
— Philippine Folk-Tales • Clara Kern Bayliss, Berton L. Maxfield, W. H. Millington,

... bear upon the topics which they, not he, had chosen for discussion. In passing from a gas-lit hall into a room with wax candles, the guests sometimes complain that they have left splendor for gloom; but let them try by what sort of light it is most satisfactory to read, write, or embroider, or consider at leisure under which of the two, either men or women ...
— Memoirs of the Life of Sir Walter Scott, Volume V (of 10) • John Gibson Lockhart

... afternoon of his life lovely woman often disturbed his soul, just as in the days of his youth. But the poetic expression of his feeling gradually became less simple and direct: he liked to embroider it with musing reflections and exotic fancies gathered from everywhere. Just as he endeavored with indefatigable eagerness of mind to keep abreast of scientific research, so he tried to assimilate the poetry ...
— The German Classics of The Nineteenth and Twentieth Centuries, • Editor-in-Chief: Kuno Francke

... have your name on the quilt you pay five cents, and if you want to have it right in the round spot in the middle of the square you must pay ten cents. Then when we have got all the names we can we will embroider them on the squares. The money is to go to the little girl our Band is supporting in Korea. I heard that nobody had asked you, so I thought perhaps you would give me ...
— The Golden Road • Lucy Maud Montgomery

... $1,000. Tyndall tells us that each drop of water sheathes electric power sufficient to charge 100,000 Leyden jars and blow the Houses of Parliament to atoms. Farraday amazes us by his statement of the energy required to embroider a violet or produce a strawberry. To untwist the sunbeam and extract the rich strawberry red, to refine the sugar, and mix its flavor, represents heat sufficient to run an engine from Liverpool to London or from Chicago to Detroit. But ...
— The Investment of Influence - A Study of Social Sympathy and Service • Newell Dwight Hillis

... inclined to be a house drudge rather than a housewife. Thrift, neatness, order, marked the limits of her endeavor, and she accomplished her tasks with the awkward, brisk directness learned in her mother's kitchen. Only mind, imagination, and refinement can embroider the homely details of life. Alida would learn to do all that she had done, but the woman with a finer nature would do it in a different way. Holcroft already knew he liked this way although he could not ...
— He Fell in Love with His Wife • Edward P. Roe

... brother, Saracus, was so like him, that what seems really to have been the end of Saracus, is generally told of Sardanapalus. He was so weary of all amusement and delight, that, by way of change, he would dress like his wives, and spin and embroider with them, and he even offered huge rewards to anyone who would invent a new pleasure. He said his epitaph should be, that he carried with him that which he had eaten, which, said wise men, was a fit motto ...
— The Chosen People - A Compendium Of Sacred And Church History For School-Children • Charlotte Mary Yonge

... these conjectures of his as if they were facts; and to do him justice he believed in them. Also, he took pains to rake up every old tale of cruelty, vanity, or lust that had been told in the past about Richard Stanton, and embroider them. Beside the satyr figure which he flaunted like a dummy Guy Fawkes, Max St. George shone a pure young martyr. Never had old Four Eyes enjoyed such popularity among the townfolk of Sidi-bel-Abbes as in these days, and he had the satisfaction of seeing veiled ...
— A Soldier of the Legion • C. N. Williamson

... the corporation laws, and knew by heart what every corporation ought to know; and accordingly he thought he could talk of affairs of state, and put his spoke in the wheel in the council. And he knew one thing more: he could embroider braces with roses and other flowers, and with arabesques, for he was ...
— What the Moon Saw: and Other Tales • Hans Christian Andersen

... that soothed my hours of care, Where would ye wander, triflers, tell me where? As maids neglected, do ye fondly dote, On the tair type, or the embroider'd coat; Detest my modest shelf, and long to fly Where princely Popes and mighty Miltons lie? Taught but to sing, and that in simple style, Of Lycia's lip, and Musidora's smile; - Go then! and taste a yet unfelt distress, The fear that guards the captivating press; Whose maddening region should ye ...
— Inebriety and the Candidate • George Crabbe

... speculate as to what they may be doing. From some distant region, the laugh of a child, the song of a canary-bird, reaches you, and then a door claps hastily to. Do they love plants? Do they write letters, sew, embroider, crochet? Do they ever romp and frolic? What books do they read? Do they sketch or paint? Of all these possibilities the mute and muffled room says nothing. A sofa and six chairs, two ottomans fresh from the upholsterer's, ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Vol. 13, No. 79, May, 1864 • Various

... a Macaroni's head— Or like old Talbot, turn'd into a fop, With coat embroider'd and scratch ...
— Memoirs of the Life of the Rt. Hon. Richard Brinsley Sheridan V1 • Thomas Moore

... now his Diamonds pours apace; 75 Th' embroider'd King who shows but half his face, And his refulgent Queen, with pow'rs combin'd Of broken troops an easy conquest find. Clubs, Diamonds, Hearts, in wild disorder seen, With throngs promiscuous strow the level green. 80 Thus when dispers'd a routed ...
— The Rape of the Lock and Other Poems • Alexander Pope

... will find with this story is that it is unconvincing. Its scheme is improbable, its atmosphere artificial. To confess that the thing really happened—not as I am about to set it down, for the pen of the professional writer cannot but adorn and embroider, even to the detriment of his material—is, I am well aware, only an aggravation of my offence, for the facts of life are the impossibilities of fiction. A truer artist would have left this story alone, or at most have kept it for ...
— Sketches in Lavender, Blue and Green • Jerome K. Jerome

... edge of the foundation on the wrong side. The work-bag is trimmed on the outside with a ruche of blue satin ribbon seven-eighths of an inch wide. Light gray instead of white cloth forms a pretty and more serviceable foundation for the embroidered strips. Little girls who do not know how to embroider may make a very handsome work-bag from this pattern by using ribbon brocaded in bright colors, or a double row of ruching around the edge in the place of the ...
— Harper's Young People, May 18, 1880 - An Illustrated Weekly • Various

... "nothing happened to me, as you may well guess, for the years of childhood that followed, when I was learning to read, write, and illuminate, to sew, embroider, cook, and serve in various ways. My Lady Prioress found that I had a wit at devising patterns and such like, so I was kept mainly to the embroidery and painting: being first reminded that it was not for mine own enjoyment, but that I should so best serve the Order. I took the words and ...
— In Convent Walls - The Story of the Despensers • Emily Sarah Holt

... Milton had been known To Lands which Conquest has insur'd our Own. Milton! whose Muse Kisses th' embroider'd Skies, While Earth below grows little, as She Flies. Thro' trackless Air she bends her winding Flight, Far as the Confines of retreating Light. Tells the sindg'd Moor, how scepter'd Death began His Lengthning Empire o'er offending ...
— Discourse on Criticism and of Poetry (1707) - From Poems On Several Occasions (1707) • Samuel Cobb

... hands and polish the legs of the chairs; there is no disgrace in the dirt, only in the duster. She may do fancy work of no earthly use, but she must not be caught making a gown. Indeed very few women could make one, and as few will do plain needlework. They will braid and embroider, "cut holes, and sew them up again," and spend any amount of time and money on beads and wools for messy draperies which no one wants; the end, being finery, sanctions the toil and refines it; but they will not do things of any practical use, or if they ...
— Modern Women and What is Said of Them - A Reprint of A Series of Articles in the Saturday Review (1868) • Anonymous

... hand this colossus,—whose feet of clay she did not choose to see; of giving life where life was needed; of being secretly the creator of a career; of helping a man of genius to struggle with fate and master it. Ah! to embroider his scarf for the tournament! to procure him weapons! to be his talisman against ill-fortune! his balm for every wound! For a woman brought up like Marie, religious and noble as she was, such a love was a form of charity. Hence the boldness of it. Pure sentiments ...
— A Daughter of Eve • Honore de Balzac

... may not sew, spin, weave, embroider sufficiently for the embellishment of their persons, and even enough to raise envy in each other, without ...
— The Querist • George Berkeley

... house-Wives, or house-Moths; remember that. In the deep sense, you must either weave men's fortunes, and embroider them; or feed upon, and bring them to decay. You had better let me keep my sewing illustration, and ...
— The Crown of Wild Olive • John Ruskin

... information, and fancied that a sort of general ignorance was more favorable to my enjoyment of what I saw there than thorough acquaintance with the city's history would have been. It certainly enabled me to accept all the poetic fiction of the custodians, and to embroider with their pleasing improbabilities the business-like succinctness of the guide-books; to make out of the twilight which involved all impressions a misty and heroic picture of the Mantuan past, wherein her great men appeared with a stately and gigantic uncertainty ...
— Italian Journeys • William Dean Howells

... have done right. Slaves can embroider: Zenobia cannot. This hand was made for other weapon ...
— Zenobia - or, The Fall of Palmyra • William Ware

... be a ranch topic when Cookie could have had ample time to embroider the thin fabric of his surmise; for it had fallen to the cook's lot to answer the bunk-house telephone when there had been a long-distance message for Blenham—and Wilson recognized old man Packard's voice in a ...
— Man to Man • Jackson Gregory

... back to town. She was learning by association with Amelia Ellen to do a few things for herself. The elderly cousin, whose years had been a long strain of scrimping to present a respectable exterior, was only too happy to have leisure and quiet to read and embroider to her heart's content. So Hazel was free to spend ...
— The Man of the Desert • Grace Livingston Hill

... feudal times for knightly families to send their daughters to the castles of their suzerain lords, to be trained to weave and embroider. The young ladies on their return home instructed the more intelligent of their female servants in these arts. Ladies of rank in all countries prided themselves upon the number of these attendants, and were in ...
— The Atlantic Monthly, Volume 18, No. 107, September, 1866 • Various

... his callous employer called after him. "Why don't you get Boogles to embroider that name of yours on the front of your shirt? He'd adore to do it. And you can still read, can't you, in the midst ...
— Somewhere in Red Gap • Harry Leon Wilson

... nothing to it. It can engrave a seal, and crush masses of obdurate metal like wax before it; draw out, without breaking, a thread as fine as gossamer, and lift a ship of war like a bauble in the air. It can embroider muslin, and forge anchors, cut steel into ribands, and impel loaded vessels against the fury of the ...
— Rides on Railways • Samuel Sidney

... Imperial, the pride of his race, Received all his guests with an infinite grace, Waved high his blue neck, and his train he display'd, Embroider'd with gold, and with emeralds inlaid; Then with all the gay troop to the shrubbery repair'd, Where the musical ...
— The Peacock 'At Home' AND The Butterfly's Ball AND The Fancy Fair • Catherine Ann Dorset

... ever heard spoken, just as he had believed her a few minutes before to be speaking the prettiest French. He wondered almost wistfully if such a sweep of the lyre didn't react on the spirit itself; and his fancy had in fact, before he knew it, begun so to stray and embroider that he finally found himself, absent and extravagant, sitting with the child in a friendly silence. Only by this time he felt her flutter to have fortunately dropped and that she was more at her ease. She trusted him, liked him, and it was to come back to him afterwards that she ...
— The Ambassadors • Henry James

... the old style was in the vigour of his treatment. He loved the large scene, the mob movement; and he worked with a big brush. As Nym Crinkle, the popular New York World dramatic critic of the day, wrote: "Whatever else he may be, [he] is not a 'lisping hawthorne bud'! He doesn't embroider such napkins as the 'Abbe Constantin', and he can't arrange such waxworks as 'Elaine'. He can't stereoscope an emotion, but he can incarnate it if you ...
— Representative Plays by American Dramatists: 1856-1911: Paul Kauvar; or, Anarchy • Steele Mackaye



Words linked to "Embroider" :   beautify, fagot, run up, ornament, faggot, decorate, lard, sew, aggrandise, embroidery, exaggerate, adorn, glorify, hyperbolise, overstate, amplify, overdraw, magnify, grace, purl, sew together, hyperbolize, stitch



Copyright © 2024 Dictionary One.com